America the Beautiful: Made in Bulgaria Eleanor Smollett
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
America the beautiful: Made in Bulgaria Eleanor Smollett This is a prepublication version ofan article published in Anthropology Today. The definitive published version can befound as: "America the Beaut!ful: Made in Bulgaria", In: ANTHROPOLOGY TODA Y, Vo!. 9, No.2, London, U. K., April, 1993. For the past coupl e of years there has been an increasing infatuation with the USA among Bulgarians. The full context for understanding thi s phenomenon must include the characteristics of sociali st development in Bulgaria as it took shape during the preceding hal f centu ry, and the dismemberment of socialist institutions in Bulgaria and elsewhere during the past few years. Si nce it is clearly impossibl e even to outline these here, this article aspires onl y to provide a road map of Ameri canization and a few observati ons along the way. These are drawn from the experience of ten research trips to Bulgaria during a twenty year period, the most recent during Spring 1990 and Spring 1991. A pithy characterization of the infatuation wi th Ameri ca was provided recently by Blagovest Sendov, President of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, in a Washington Post interview (S January 1992). 'Right now', he said, 'the American is the ideal. Bulgarians believe that Americans never li e, they never steal, they never throw rubbish on the streets'. In a way, thi s shouldn't surprise me. Six years ago, urban Bulgarian high school seniors -- the same youth who are the vocal young adults of the present -- were assuring me that unemployment couldn't possibly exist in ri ch countries like 'America' and Canada, except among the lazy, when even in a poor CO Wltry such as theirs all were employed. They also believed that all Americans loved Reagan. Any contrary information must originate, they were sure, from Bulgaria's propaganda apparatus. [n the pre-Gorbachev era, with little access to foreign media, the Radio Free Europe version of America was just about the only non-Bulgari an source that was avai lable. It waited in the wings as the image of prosperi ty and democracy to be contrasted with the frustrations experi enced by the Bulgarian youth of the 70s and 80s. Nevertheless, the I 990s' in fatuation wi th Ameri ca did surprise me. Thi s was because, after ovember [989, when opposition Communists had deposed the long-term Communist leadership, all major Bulgarian politi cal forces had declared themselves to be setting out 'on the road to Europe', not the road to America. These politi cal fo rces included both the Socialist Party (formerl y the Communist party, reorganized under a partl y new leadership), and the several opposition coalitions. Bulgarian political discourse debated onl y how the road to Europe should be travelled. This road was to lead (either gradually, according to the Socialists, or through 'shock treatment' according to the oppositi on) to a market economy and, more immediately, to the June 1990 multi-party parliamentary election. I wi ll sketch in some of the events of thi s election as backgroWld to other observati ons to foll ow. The 1990 election was contested by dozens of parties, most of them newly formed, and by several multi-party coali tions. Those who proved to have significant followings were the Socialist Party and the Union of Democratic Forces, or UDF, a coalition of 16 parties ranging from monarchi sts to Social Democrats, united onl y in being anti-communist. During the run-up to the [990 election, in the rhetori c of all sides, the notions 'the road to Europe', 'market economy' and 'multi-party elections' quickly became coterminous with 'democracy' and 'prosperi ty'. However, sorting out all the underl ying subtleties in what 'the road to Europe' meant is complicated. In the campaign di scourse, 'Europe' meant moving towards the EC and , by implication, towards the prosperity of I its members. But hanging in the background, li ke a gossamer curtain swirling about the campaign rhetoric, was the old Bulgarian (and pan-Balkan) anxiety to prove themselves to be 'tTue Europeans', prosperous and civili zed, and not backward 'eastern' descendants of the Ottoman Empire. I The main opposition coalition, the UDF, played on all these elements by running a slick Western-sty le election campaign. Sophisticated UDF TV commercials appeared, showing fabulously stocked food markets in Greece, with the message The choice is yours. Vote for prosperity'. Only occasionall y did campaign speeches explain more candidly that the 'shock treatment' transformation to a capitalist economy would bring some hardships along the way to the promised prosperity. European and American campaign experts, and millions of dollars of European and American money, ran thi s campaign. Some of the American money came from U.S. government infornlation services, some from 'voluntary organizations' such as the U.S. Republican Party. The UDF plastered the country with bright posters that all could see were printed on foreign-made papers with foreign-made inks. The World is With Us', said the posters. Translation: The Capitali st World will invest here and give us loans if, and onl y if, you vote for the UDF'. Speeches and widespread graffiti , as well as less cheery posters crowded with skulls, advocated defeating 'the Communist murderers', and vengeance against Communists. The Socialist Party, lacking money, lacking foreign aid, and lacking -- by this time -- much access to the mass media (which were already largely 'democratized' and in the control of young supporters of the opposition) ran a low key campaign. They relied on public gatherings, on TV time allotted by the election law, and on their own press. They admitted that, given the disintegration of the international socialist economy, they had nowhere to go but to the market, and no clear economic plan; but they would develop a plan, they said, that retained as much as possible of what working people had gained under socialism. They stated clearly that hard times were coming, and they promised no prosperity. They conceded the planning failures, inadequate democratization and corruption of the past -- but denied that these justified the discarding of socialist objectives. Despite the difficult circumstances, the Socialist rallies had an upbeat mood, filled with laughter and a sense ofwann solidarity. The leaders' speeches had a tone of tenderness and quiet reflection, of empathy with their listeners; and the response was in kind. 'We have been through a lot in thi s period; we have learned some terrible things about our past; we must live through it in solidarity and retain our goals'. The speeches decried the vindictiveness of the opposition's campaign and its painting of all Communists with a criminal brush. And, although the Socialists had also declared themselves to be 'on the road to Europe', they mocked the opposition's obsequiousness toward the West as Ihe locus of civilization. The fine honed po litical satire that is so well developed and appreciated in Bulgaria was evident in the speeches, and was met by delighted hilarity -as in one speech at a huge rally, given by Angel Wagenstein, a much beloved film and theatre director. The UDF', he said, 'has dispatched a blue express train' (blue was the UDF campaign colour), 'a blue train hurtling towards Europe, where backward Bulgaria will learn civilization; well, we ask of the UDF only to include one small red caboose on their blue train, and in it will ride Geo Milev and icola Vaptsarov, Pablo Picasso and Sean O'Casey .. ' and there followed a long list of all the greatest Communist intellectuals of Bulgaria and the world. I I was reminded by chance of the pan -Balk an nalure of this anxiety th is summer, when I read in the press a quole from a Bosnian Muslim. a professor of soc iology. 'We used to have a pcaccfullife', he said . 'We th ought we were Europeans. I had a big house. my children were in high school ... so I never expected th ese things could ever happen to us ... We afC not Kurd s. we arc Europeans, there must be SOffie justice' . (Toronto Globe & Mail, 27 July 1992.) 2 At rallies, the Sociali st slogans were simply: 'We are still here', 'We are many', 'We shall be victorious'. And they were victorious. The Sociali st Party won the election, won it with a clear parliamentary majority. But in an eerie echo of their pre-World War 2 election victories (i n the then monarchist Bulgaria), they won but were not allowed to govern 2 And it is here that we must return to America the Beautiful. Because it was towards the end of thi s 1990 campaign, when it became evident that the Sociali sts mi ght very well wi n the election, that the Ameri can presence became extremely noticeable. And it remained so from then into the present. As a Wash ington Post reporter later commented (5 January, 1992), The European Community is actual ly spending more in Bulgaria than the United States, but Ameri ca carries a bigger megaphone'. By the latter part of the 1990 campaign, it had become obvious that 'Europe' was preoccupi ed with other pro blems and pl aces, and was not hastening to promise EC membership to Bulgaria. 'America', on the other hand, having been alarmed by Bulgaria's Spring 1990 moratorium on debt repayments, and perceiving the possibi lity ofa Sociali st victory, expressed increasing interest. Some groundwork had been laid the year before. Bulgarian-American Friendship Societies had been establi shed. Bulgarian sociologists had carried out opini on surveys, commissioned by (and on themes formu lated by) these societies, about Bulgarian images of American li fe, and had widely broadcast the positi ve results.